Dear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,
I propose that you initiate the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would grant the president the right to give amnesty to prisoners. After the adoption of the amendment, the president should issue an executive order, the Senate should debate and adopt the Amnesty Law, and the legislature of each state shall consider the pardon of every prisoner resident of that state.
As of 2022, there were 1,808,000 prisoners in U.S. prisons. There is an average of 541 prisoners per 100,000 residents. The USA leads in the number of prisoners in absolute terms and holds between a fifth and sixth of all prisoners on the planet, although the population of the USA is only 5% of the world’s population. The cost of maintaining the prison system to U.S. taxpayers is $80 billion annually.
There is a great injustice in the USA: millions of honest Americans are unemployed and homeless. At the same time, criminals are in prison buildings, provided with food, heat, clothing, and even security. The government spends billions of taxpayers dollars on their maintenance. This is very expensive given the national debt of more than 35 trillion. It is appropriate to say that freedom is more valuable than all prison benefits.
Through amnesty, it is possible and necessary to gradually release up to a million prisoners in U.S. prisons. They must work, feed themselves, their children and families, and also pay taxes.
If Biden, together with Harris, announces the draft of the 28th amendment on amnesty, then hundreds of thousands of relatives of prisoners and ordinary Americans will vote in the elections for candidates from the Democratic Party, and we will win the election.
An example of a similar amnesty law is a law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On Amnesty,” which President Emomali Rahmon signed in 2011 in honor of the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence.
Here is a brief summary of some articles in the law.
Article 1 states that those sentenced to imprisonment who have served three-quarters of their sentence can be released.
Article 2 states that convicts who are women, minors, men over 55, disabled, veterans, recipients of state awards, and foreign citizens are exempt from serving their sentence in the form of imprisonment.
Article 4 states that convicted people who have committed minor and moderate crimes and who have been sentenced to up to five years of imprisonment may be released
Article 8 states that the unserved term of punishment for people convicted of a serious crime can be reduced by one-third of the term, and by one-quarter for people who committed an especially serious crime, with some exceptions.
Article 11 states that the provisions of Article 8 do not apply to people who committed certain crimes, are sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty, who benefitted from amnesty before and committed a similar crime, or who committed another crime while in prison.
